


Fantastic

by Killer8ees



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Corruption, Demons, Established Relationship, M/M, Medical School, Olympics, Rituals, Slow Build, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:55:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7314256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killer8ees/pseuds/Killer8ees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Akaashi finally gets with his crush-of-too-many-years, but doesn't know how to operate in an actual relationship. He's used to being in love from afar, not so close and it's freaking him out. Amidst this malaise, Bokuto's heading to the Olympic training, gone for months at a time and he has to deal with what happens next. Bokuto goes to Rio, Akaashi goes to medical school, and weird shit goes with them. What do Akaashi's perpetual cold, the creepy recruiter he start seeing around practice, a trail of owl feathers, and Bokuto's rotor cuff all have in common? Akaashi hopes absolutely nothing. He hopes. </p>
<p>(suggest you read part 1 and 2 first, but it's ok if naw. This build is slower than the others, promise)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fantastic

The ball shoots across the court, its clean arc cuts through the air along the angle of Bokuto’s arm. _Shit._ Akaashi blinked.

It echoes on the polished floor. Already it’s shooting up into the stands, graceful in its high curve. From Akaashi view, for a second it blocks out the steep sun that peaks into the gym so early in the morning.

The coach sounds the whistle—of course it’s in.

“Hey hey hey!”

Bokuto’s eyes shoot over at Akaashi for a second—just a fleeting moment—and of course they lock in contact with one another, of course Akaashi was watching him.

Always, he commands the attention of the whole court. Even at practice, Bokuto is swept up by his teammates and his coach, congratulations and admonitions and advice as Akaashi watches on. Bokuto’s picked up a poor habit in his finish and he’s going to tear his rotor cuff if he keeps it up, Akaashi’s noticed. He doesn’t like it. He picks at the fraying seams of his medical bag absentmindedly as Bokuto comes to the serving line once more.

From the bench, he can’t help but feel nostalgic for this—the vibrations of a good serve whizzing past his ear, the weak twinge in his ring finger when he sets the ball, the winning. The whole court looks different from the sidelines. It’s for the best, of course. He can easily count thirty-two reasons why it should be this way. But he’s not happy about it.

Another whistle, and Bokuto’s back at the serving line, dribbling the ball like he always does. Akaashi watches the tight fabric of his shorts stretch as he readies the serve, and he can’t help but feel like it’s high school all over again. The ball leaves his hand, his arms swing back for his approach, a bird of prey at the ready. Then he glances over, again their eyes meet—a flash of a half-second—and he could’ve _sworn_ Bokuto just winked at him before the jump. The serve, the impact, the backline, the echo, the whistle, the next point in the practice match. He feels his cheeks turning red and averts his eyes.

He lied, earlier. Thank god, it’s nothing like high school.

* * * * *

  


During lecture, he notices he’s wearing Bokuto’s sweater. Writing down the parts of the patella on faded graph paper, his thumb pops into a threadbare hole at the end of the sleeve. He knows his own Fukurodani sweater doesn’t have that. As the professor continues droning on, flipping through slides as the overhead projector whirs up above him, he casually smells the corner of the neckline—the unfamiliar detergent and hint of too-familiar sweat: definitely Bokuto’s.

_me: i took the wrong sweater this morning, sry_

The other medical students stare on with perfect poise as he tries to be as subtle as possible about his phone. Each has perfectly coifed hair, some even come in blazers, with color-coded pens and highlighters, a precise burst of color on every notebook he can see from the back of the lecture hall. He forgets his textbook most days. He forgot to shower today.

_Bokuto: lololol keep it! :)_

_me: i can return it, afternoon practice sound good?_

The slide flips to an image of tendons and muscle, an uncoiling of dark red veins and pillowy fat pulled apart with forceps, revealing bone underneath like an ancient excavation. The professor explains Monday will be dissection day. Wear closed toe shoes.

_Bokuto: no nonono_

_Bokuto: keep itttttttttt_

He looks up and sees a girl on the end of his row staring at him. Her back looks unnaturally straight, her hair a hard line of bangs and a bob. Her judgment, scalding.

Akaashi looks back at the screen and hopes she forgets his face in a couple of days. The class has moved on to the thigh, traveling up the leg like a lover.

  


* * * * *

  


He sits in the library, with the waning light of early autumn eating up the horizon in its rabid red. The windows here stretch on for ages, its old architecture forming a canopy of arches at the high points of the ceiling. Voices echo in from far off hallways, but the reading room is always silent. Whenever he sets his pen down, it’s like a freight train clacking along compared to the barren soundscape.

A note slides on top of his chemistry homework and he recognizes the aggressive scrawl.

_did u do the readings?_

Kuroo plops down in the chair just across from him, its skuttle against the floor might as well be nails on a chalkboard. He slides another post-it across the table.

_cuz i didnt_

Akaashi couldn’t physically roll his eyes harder. He scratches out a reply,

_Not my problem._

Kuroo’s reading glasses dip on his cheeks as he pouts like a two-year-old. ‘That’s cold,’ he mouths, and Akaashi really doesn’t give a fuck. Kuroo hoists his backpack up and onto the table, the thud echoes for what seems like miles as Kuroo takes pleasure, Akaashi imagines, in just how obnoxious it is. Akaashi writes another note:

_Don’t take up my whole table_

Kuroo smirks, raises one insufferable eyebrow, and opens his book to pretend to read. Kuroo is in enough of his basic science classes that Akaashi puts up with him for the sake of a study buddy. After the shitshow of first-year orientation, he was over the mystique of college quite quickly and defaulted back to high school friends. All anyone in his program talked about was their exam scores and how many generations back their family’s Todai legacy goes. Their pedigree is as musty as this gothic library. Consider him unimpressed with ‘new people’.

Kuroo flicks another note over onto his papers.

_r u coming by the apt later tonight?_

If Akaashi’s not there to study with Kuroo, he’s there for Bokuto. He’s pretty sure the neighbors think he’s their third roommate now. Despite his efforts, he’s caught in the gravitational pull of familiarity. Once, he thought he could reinvent himself as the correct kind of college student, find himself in a new galaxy making himself into a new star (or something silly like that). He’s since learned to mediate his expectations.

_Probably._

Kuroo grins, _business or pleasure? or both???_

_Neither, you’re both a pain._

Kuroo snorts at that, and a librarian is there in an instant, shushing them both.

  


* * * * *

  


“Hey hey hey, there you are!” Bokuto smiles and sits down next to him on the bench after laps, wiping the sweat from his neck with one of the coarse gym towels.

“How is your arm?” Akaashi asks, cutting straight to the point.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, don’t worry so much, you’re starting to sound like coach!”

“If you fixed your form, I wouldn’t have to worry,” Akaashi says simply as he checks his kit once more. He has to note the inventory in the medical office later. A wrap bandage went to Sawamura’s ankle. Half the tape went to Oikawa’s fingers and the sweat that kept slicking it off. A pad of gauze and the rest of the tape went to Nishinoya’s shin. And then another pad and another after that with every hard dive he took thereafter.

“Hah!” Bokuto slaps him on the back so hard he almost drops the alcohol wipes he’s counting, “You’d worry anyways, Akaashi. Keep it up and you’ll get wrinkles and go gray in a year!”

Akaashi sighs, but notices Bokuto’s hand stays on his back, just between his spine and shoulder blade, a warmth against his deltoid. His medical classes makes him notice these things more: the distal points of Bokuto’s phalanges sit just between where his cervical and thoracic vertebrae meet. It’s the closest to real PDA Akaashi will allow for now. Even after three months of dating, his shoulders still tense for a second when Bokuto does this. They’re both reaching into this unknown like neurons searching for connection, stretching into the space, out in all directions hoping for a second their cells overlap.

The ions cascade, an electric sensation.

“I need to stop by the office after this,” Akaashi mentions, quotidian as he files away his mental inventory.

“I can meet you after?” Bokuto has a tendency to phrase his statements as questions, as if the answer wasn’t obvious.

“Yeah, but I have to stop at the store on my way home, I’m behind on groceries.”

“You can just stay at mine, I mean Kuroo just bought some yesterday, you know?”

“That’s not a solution to the fact that I still will not have groceries in my kitchen, Bokuto,” he says.

“But it is if you just always stay there.”

Akaashi blinks.

Bokuto blushes.

“Do you mean—“

“I mean--! Not like that, but like--!” He sputters as Akaashi’s eyes go wide, “If you want to eat at my place, you can anytime! Just stop by whenever! It’s really okay, okay?”

“Yeah, I understand,” he says, still confused just what’s going on here.

“So um,” Bokuto stands awkwardly, “um I’ll see you later?”

“Yes,” he agrees, “But I’m still getting groceries later too.” Akaashi misses the hand on his back, but it’s fine. He refuses to let himself get needy over Bokuto. He’s still feeling out his edges in this and he doesn’t want them to blur just yet—he knows where they both begin and end and he likes it that way.

He nods, but stalls as he fidgets over something.

“What?” Akaashi finally asks, zipping his bag up finally.

“Can I walk you out?” Bokuto asks, that earnest expression as if it’s high school all over again, confessing for the first time.

Most days Akaashi would find this endearing, but he needs to pick up broccoli after this. He grabs him by the hand and tugs him along, leaving the mostly empty gym as their sneakers squeak into the distance.

* * * 

  


He runs his fingers through Bokuto’s hair like a bad habit. It’s thick and stands up on its own—the type that’s fun to play with. Miraculously, the dark roots haven’t overtaken the bleached white even after all this time. The television murmurs along with a gameshow or a drama or anything else, as they sit curled up in front of the couch. Akaashi can feel along his sagittal suture, all the way until it connects with the occipital bone. He counts the cranium’s landmarks, one by one, trying to memorize the structures as his eyes skim his textbook non-committal. He wears his reading glasses more often now, but he can’t tell if Bokuto likes it or even notices.

“Hey, Akaashi?” Bokuto whispers up at him, twisting his head in Akaashi’s lap until he can look up at him properly.

“What is it?” he asks as he rereads the word _foramen_ for a fifth time now.

“Are you staying here tonight again?”

His hands still, fingers resting on the right coronal and left lambdoid sutures. “Maybe,” he says.

“Well if you do, you know you don’t have to sleep on the couch, right?” He knows Bokuto’s looking at him like a puppy and he makes a point to keep staring at the textbook. “I don’t mind sharing a bed with you, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. I just don’t want to wake you when I get up in the morning for class.”

“I have to get up for practice anyways,” Bokuto says, trying to be nice about the fact he knows Akaashi’s making excuses. He sits up to face him properly, putting one arm around him to get his attention. “It’s a standing offer.”

Akaashi kisses his cheek, and they both know that means he’s not staying at all tonight, “Thank you.” Then they kiss properly, “Thanks, Koutarou.”

* * * * *

  


He gets home on the wrong side of midnight after a cuddly Bokuto and a delayed train. He scales the stairs to his apartment like a monster lurching back to his swamp—he feels like it too, the exhaustion of the hour gnaws at him. There’s an ache in his muscles and he knows he must be getting sick now that flu season is starting. He tries to rally the energy to put himself to bed properly, but it’s a lost cause. Akaashi doesn’t bother turning any lights on, simply sheds his pants and collapses in the pile of blankets and pillows and papers and pencils that live on his bed. He’s still in the same sweater from earlier.

He hears his phone buzz in some far-off pocket (his backpack? This pants? He forgets) and he knows it’s Bokuto making sure he got home safely. He turns his head to the window (away from it), and the glow from street lights hover like will o’the wisps in the dark evening. It didn’t rain today but the humidity rolled in just as the sun finished setting, an odd fog covers the wet grass. The weather is fickle this time of year. The clouds ate the moon whole and there’s nothing in the sky but rain-fat clouds on the horizon.

He falls asleep too quickly, too easily. He would’ve jumped to his phone in high school, but now he tunes out the noise. He would’ve given anything to stay, but now he makes a point to go home. Isn’t love an evening spent tossing and turning without him? Noticing the lack of dip on the other side of the bed? A worried question at the base of the skull? Akaashi leaves easily and often, doesn’t hate himself for it after. His heart begs for hidden attention, glances and small touches, but doesn’t know what to do with the option for more. He’s afraid what he’ll do if he lets himself have it all. All he’s ever known is how to have crushes. The moon is gone tonight, and he doesn’t pray for anyone’s return.

He notices this fact the morning after, as he spits the froth of toothpaste down the sink. It disappears in a swirl. He frowns in the mirror. He goes to class.

* * * * *

  


Today he’s been assigned to the soccer team—they have a game on the furthest fields and the Sports Office wants all of the medical student interns on stand-by for first aid. This happens often enough, it’s silly to be annoyed by it, but he always dislikes missing a volleyball practice. It feels unnatural, knowing there will be sets and spikes he won’t get to see.

It rained all day and now the slick grass slides out from under the cleats and balls go to the face more often than usual. Under angry clouds and the intermittent sound of far-off thunder, he splints calves, tapes goalies’ fingers, treats cut after cut, the dark blood pooling with the dirt as it drips down cheekbones. One particularly bad femur fracture leaves him holding manual traction for twenty minutes—thank god for the remnants of his volleyball thighs—bent over and pulling taut on the athlete’s leg so the muscle around it, like a startled dog clamping down on a bone, stops squeezing the break. The soccer player screams at first, but Akaashi holds fast, relieving the pressure. Bodies don’t always act in their best interest. That’s when he comes in.

When he goes back to the medic office, filing in with the other interns, he finally turns his phone on and texts from Bokuto flooding his inbox. Play-by-plays of their three-on-three, a video of Kuroo’s serve, a few selfies. Bokuto’s so used to having him at practice, he doesn’t know the appropriate response when Akaashi’s not there. Hence: fifteen texts, seven snaps, and a group chat that reads more like a fever dream.

_me: sorry I missed these, just got off shift_

That’ll do for now.

He puts his medic bag back in the cubby, sorting through the supplies one last time before he closes his report. Other medics shuffle around, changing out of their uniform polos, making fun of the particularly annoying patients that day, a dull chatter in the dull room as they bustle and swerve around him. Just as Akaashi finishes counting the last pad of gauze, something sharp pokes him.

“Shit!” He quickly recoils.

He checks his hand, no blood so it can’t be so sharp. He takes his bag down from the cubby box and puts it on a nearby desk for a better look, setting it atop piles of papers and reports. Under the green fluorescent light, it takes him a second but he sees something cylindrical sticking out between the cold packs and roller gauze.  He pulls on his bright blue gloves, the nitrile snapping close to his wrist, and investigates.

He pulls out an owl feather, its long brown streaks are a bit frayed by the jumble of his bag. He assumes it fell in while he was fixing one of many incidents today. He sets it aside and starts taking off his gloves, when he sees the glint of another semi-clear cylinder—another feather caught between the trauma sheers and nasal tubes. Then another, and another, till he pulls out six in total, littering the bottom of his bag.  

“This is just stupid,” he sighs. Akaashi sends a snap, because he knows Bokuto will be excited, but he’s not thrilled an owl decided to molt all over his equipment. He throws them away along with his gloves, changes quickly out of his polyester uniform, and heads home just as the rain is starting up again, the sky grumbles along with him.

_Bokuto: ahhhh!!!! i wanna seeeeee_

_Bokuto: im still in practice :(_

_me: I saved you one_

_me: I’ll be home in like 30min, you can stop be whenever_

 

 

An hour later, as he pads around barefoot in faded sweatpants and one of those terrible high school tournament shirts, the knock on his door comes. He sets the stove from medium to low heat, his tiny half-kitchen can still cook up enough to bathe the apartment in the warm smell of curry, and heads for the door.

“Hi,” Bokuto smiles, breathlessly. Akaashi notices how intermittent this sight is: Bokuto on his doorstep. Come to think of it, it’s been a while since Akaashi invited him to his place. Bokuto’s apartment is closer to campus, he reminds himself, there’s a logical explanation for this.

“Did you seriously forget your umbrella, today of all days?” He asks as he ushers him in, starting to pull the soaked coat off his shoulders.

Bokuto laughs, his hair plastered to his forehead, curling with the weight of water, “It was sunny when I left this morning!”

“The forecast said it was going to rain all night,” Akaashi sighs as he hangs his jacket up and slides the doormat under it to soak up the inevitable drip.

“Is that it?”

He turns around, and Bokuto’s standing in the middle of his living room, staring at the feather sitting plainly on his coffee table.

“Yeah,” he says simply, picks it up and twirls it by its stem in front of Bokuto. “This is it.”

Bokuto keeps staring and it’s probably the quietest Akaashi’s seen him in the past month. After all those texts, this wasn’t the response he expected. It’s uncomfortable. It’s just a feather. Akaashi opens his mouth to ask, but Bokuto breaks into a familiar smile and gently plucks it from his hand, skimming his fingertips along its fine edge.

“This is so cool! Did you see the owl it came from?”

“No,” Akaashi says, relaxing a bit, “It was probably overdue for a molt if it lost so many feathers at once.”

“Poor thing,” Bokuto murmurs, still playing with the gossamer spaces threading the feather together.

These are the moments Akaashi considers himself so lucky to see. Bokuto on the court is a force to be reckoned with. Off it, the boy is often a series of artless limbs, earnest smiles, and a too-loud laugh. Even when he’s sad, his dejection is palpable, taking up the whole room and sucking out the oxygen in an instant. But once in a while, the pendulum settles in a valley of quiet. The perennial motion comes to rest. A collective deep breath. It’s not his most favorite moments, but he does feel luckiest to be able to see them. A fleeting minute is enough.

He kisses the corner of his lips, “I’m going to check the curry. We can study after we eat.” He heads into the closet-kitchen, leaving before anything can sour the moment.  


End file.
